KNOLLS CLEANUP ESTIMATE: $200M.(CAPITAL REGION)

Byline: DINA CAPPIELLO Staff writer -

On the surface, the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory is an unassuming maze of asphalt, office buildings and abandoned laboratory space separated from the outside world by an 8-foot-tall metal fence.

But it's what's inside -- and beneath it -- that matters.

At 35 locations sprinkled throughout the 170-acre site that borders the Mohawk River there is known, or suspected, contamination.

In about 10 spots, the pollution is a radioactive soup left over from the late 1940s when the laboratory assisted in federal nuclear weapons research. In other places, the contamination is more modern -- PCBs from a leaky transformer, heavy metals from a scrap yard and chlorinated …